Companies purchase risk management services to assess risks and exposures within relevant globally distributed properties to better assess and manage property protection and other investments, including human resources and business processes. Risk management services may include, for example, strategic planning and consulting, risk identification, loss prevention assessment and analysis surveys, and capital project review and management. Source data is generally collected from the purchasing company's locations, people, and processes by an extended team of globally distributed field associates, who issue evaluations and recommendations to correct property protection deficiencies; these recommendations and evaluations are generated based on consulting judgment. The source data is refreshed at each consulting engagement or at each field associate visit or via other communications. Typically, such services generate static reports for the companies; the companies, in turn, must sift through lengthy, obscure third-party evaluations of their loss control efforts and physical protection systems in order to benefit from the reports. The reading, maintenance and administration of these reports, and the management of resulting action items, is both time consuming and difficult, effectively devaluing associated investments in property protection, human resources and business processes. Moreover, many companies physically re-enter certain data from the reports into company-owned databases so as to facilitate local manipulation of data.
The invention seeks to advance the state of the art by a providing a seamless interface for real-time manipulation and management of risk management information over a network. Several other features of the invention are apparent within the description that follows.